Hispanics in America Are Significantly Less Likely to Have Health Insurance

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Written by Sy Mukherjee

Hispanic Americans in every U.S. state are more likely to be uninsured than the general population and other minorities, according to new data from the Census Bureau.

The new numbers find that more than 40 percent of Hispanics who live in southern states like Mississippi and North Carolina don’t have basic health insurance. All told, nearly a third of Hispanics are uninsured in over half of all U.S. states — a far higher figure than other minority groups such as African Americans:

CREDIT: Washington Post/U.S. Census Bureau

The insurance gap underscores how critical Obamacare implementation will be for Hispanics — and specifically, Latinos — living in America. High population states with large Hispanic communities stand to benefit the most from the health law’s optional Medicaid expansion and subsidies for individual policies that can be purchased through statewide insurance marketplaces. For instance, more than 15 million of the 48 million uninsured Americans live in California, Texas and Florida alone — and the vast majority of them are Hispanic.

Getting health benefits through Medicaid or the Obamacare marketplaces could help these Americans afford to manage chronic conditions that disproportionately affect them, such as diabetes. Latinos tend to have type-2 diabetes at almost double the rate that non-Latinos do.

Unfortunately, stubborn GOP opposition to Obamacare is likely to deny health coverage to millions of these Americans. Approximately 57 percent of all uninsured Hispanics live at or below 138 percent of the Federal Poverty Level. States that expand Medicaid under Obamacare will get generous federal funding to provide public insurance to Americans at that income level. But almost every state with the highest rates of uninsured Hispanics — including Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi and North Carolina — has refused to expand Medicaid under reform.

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54 comments

to all you people who think medicade will cover the cost of helth care for these people , DON'T know jack, when i first had to stop working because of retina surgery, we applied for medicade, guess what, with an income of $320 a month our share of cost for either my wife or my self was $695, which means we would need to have medical bills of $695 before they would help and you wonder why the republicans don't want to expand medicare, just how many trillions of dollars do you want to spend and who will pay for them

I second (or third, or fourth, or three-thousandth, or six-trillionth) the call for a universal health care plan of the single-payer variety. So many problems would be solved, and so much unhappiness averted!

But will anyone in power listen to me? (To us?) Of course not. We're only talking sense.

Adam S, Tania S, and Janice T., why do you assume that Hispanics are undocumented immigrants? It's assumptions and blanket statements like that that add fuel to the fire and have helped create a lot of the hostilities that exist in this country since Hispanic people regardless of country of origin and legal status are being classified as a threat to society. There needs to be universal healthcare that accessible to all citizens regardless of age, gender, race, etc.

Thanks...very sad. I believe we still need to work toward a single payer system that includes everyone. Adam S, Tania S, and Janice T...your statement/implication that all or even most "Hispanics" are here in this country "illegally" may make for great conversation when you attend your Klan meetings, but they have no basis in truth. It must be so frightening for you to be so afraid of those who are different from you, but I can tell you that most of us, not just Latino's, are different from you. Most are not bigots filled with the hate and ignorance that seems to be a staple of your lives.

I have really crummy healthcare insurance which means the deductible would require a major operation to even be usable and then your in debt trying to pay the deductible off. But I at least have something since the vast majority of my friends have zero. So I'm not feeling real bad about others. I wish them good health and the best of luck.